Quotes By John Hawkes

I think that no matter how dark a person is, the more you learn about them, the more you understand about their life, the more you can sympathize with them or even root for them.

I don't have actor training myself.

Certainly I've had the experience of thinking a person was one thing, and finding out they were another.

It seems like every year Hollywood makes an attempt to retell the Manson story, and I just couldn't be less interested in it. It's not really our crowning achievement as a civilisation. I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, but it just bores me.

When you're just starting out, and someone you think is a real storyteller says something good about you, that helps.

Some friends of mine bothered me for a long time about getting on the social networking pages. They were close friends that I liked to mess with, and I think that I kind of enjoyed for a while that it bothered them so much. Now they've just kind of given up.

I think we're all mysteries to ourselves.

In the time between when you first read a script and are offered the role and the time when you begin to shoot, I really love putting in the time and work on that and getting a solid backstory to a character and researching all that I can about what that person does for a vocation or their upbringing or where they're from.

I've never had any delusions about being a leading man, and it's not sour grapes to say that in the best films that I've always enjoyed, the cliched leading man type isn't a part of the picture.

It's hard to get concert tickets.

I maintain that if you're a novelist and you go into an art museum, you'll come out a better novelist. And if you paint a picture for an hour you're a better actor at the end of it.

For me and for I'm sure any actor, each role is a different challenge to prepare for in a different way.

I met Robert Rodriguez working on a movie called 'Roadracers.'

I went to a performance of 'The Crucible' at the Guthrie when I was a sophomore in high school, and I knew right away that that's what I wanted to do.

I don't think there are in life, pure darkness or pure light. Everyone's got a little of everything.

People have said unkind things and you kind of have to, if you happen to read it, you have to just, you know, move on.

I don't have any training as an actor, but I guess I'm an intense pretender. When you read something over and over, it gets into you a little bit. You can't help but begin to feel it, even if you're a healthy person as I think I am.

As an actor you have to have a strong vivid imagination as you're working and when the camera's rolling, but there's certainly a part of you that is aware of real life, that you're making a movie.

I lived in Texas for 10 years.

When something gets attention so quickly, people sometimes will look for reasons to find fault and tear it down.

As an actor, I think a mistake that any storyteller can make is to play the ending.

I understand why people achieve a level of fame and disappear, I never understood it before, but it's an attractive prospect to walk away from it all.

Part of the way that I work is to observe.

Being a kid, as all kids do, you feel out of place or like kind of a freak. You wake up feeling like your head got put onto someone else's body that day.

Even the small amount of infamy I have makes me uncomfortable - on a personal level and on a professional level.